Re: Suggestions

["Kevin D. Knerr, Sr." <kknerrsr ptdprolog net>]

On 26 Nov, Fábio Gomes de Souza wrote:

>   If we had a library that encapsulates window management and decoration
> routines in GNOME and the default window manager uses this library, what's
> the problem to have another window manager running instead of the default?
>   The window manager will just behave and look differently from the GNOME
> library defaults (and the suggested MDI model). No problem.

Sort of like KDE & kwm?? IIRC, you can use another wm, but then you lose
many "KDE" features because they're implemented in kwm.

I'm not certain this is a good idea . . .
 
>   If we had such a library, applications like XMMS, for example, wouldn't
> have to reimplement window management routines just because they want to
> (say) move their window (see the easymove feature) and snap it to others.
> Instead, they would call a library routine to move the window interactively
> and the library would care about the rest.
> 
>   Code reuse is good, guys! :)

XMMS has to "reimplement" these wm routines because it's not a pure
GNOME app--it's an X app. Implementing these features in a "libgwm"
would only complicate the XMMS code, since if they chose to support the
libgwm model, they would have to do so *in addition to* the codebase
they already have. Furthermore, if the "libgwm" doesn't do what they
want, then they have to handle all of the exceptions so that XMMS would
always behave the same way.

Given that situation, would *you* use a "libgwm"? It's far simpler to
program the code once for all X environments than to write code
dedicated to supporting each of CDE, GNOME, KDE and no DE.

Fábio, I suspect you're coming from an MS-Win/DOS centric background.
What you see as a weakness in X is it's main strength: X does not
specify how a windowing environment behaves--it is a protocol for a
networked GUI, and as such, leaves the display details to the wm. For
most of us, the X host & X client are the same machine--but they don't
have to be.

In short, I think some of your suggestions are more properly directed
toward the wm coding community rather than GNOME in particular--but I
not sure they'd receive a warm reception there. We balding, bearded,
bespectacled, braces-wearing Unix geeks tend to value diversity. [1]

Barthel

[1] For the Dilbert-impaired, this refers to a strip in which Dilbert
encounters (and recognizes) a Unix geek, who responds: "Here's a nickel.
Buy yourself a real computer, Sonny."
-- 
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       Organization: The Pennswald Group -- Linux powered!!

The box said "Requires Windows 95 or better."
     So why doesn't it run on Linux???